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I have an SVN repository where I have trunk and a branch.

I intend to merge the trunk into the branch at regular intervals, however, when I do this I see many property status changes, in addition to actual file content changes.

On further investigation the property changes are mergeinfo properties. I wouldn't expect this because we always branch and merge from the top root level.

I used the svn propdel command and removed all mergeinfo properties from the branch WC (then reverted the change on the root) before merging trunk in, and the problem went away.

So the question is, how did my branch get all these mergeinfo changes in it at sub-directory levels?

Peter Mortensen
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Neil Barnwell
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    +1: I've seen this sort of thing, and we aren't even using svn 1.5 on the server (using homegrown merge-tracking tools). I'd love to hear some explanation on it, as it looks horrifying in the change log (I didn't touch that file!! oh, it's just some property change...) – richq Dec 24 '08 at 17:51

2 Answers2

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Subversion 1.5.x adds a lot of svn:mergeinfo properties, even on files/folders which you think have nothing to do with the merge. But Subversion still uses those to reduce the merge time for subsequent merges.

If you don't like those, you can safely remove those modified/added svn:mergeinfo properties from all files/folders which were not part of the merge (leave it on the working copy root and the files/folders that got changes from the merge).

Subversion 1.6 will have those svn:mergeinfo properties reduced a lot if everything goes as planned with the 1.6 release.

Stefan
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  • +1. Good explanation. Possibly you know is it possible to disable modification of properties for those files which were not modified? It could be good to set up some option and don't worry about this any more. Thanks. – sergtk May 05 '10 at 08:00
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    Any idea whether this is server-side or client-side functionality? – ddimitrov Aug 19 '10 at 02:15
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    I am using svn 1.6.6 and still see this problem. – Jahanzeb Farooq May 31 '12 at 11:27
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At least one part of this bug was fixed in Subversion 1.5.5. From the 1.5.5 CHANGES file:

do not create mergeinfo for wc-wc moves or copies (r34184, -585)

That is, there was a bug in SVN prior to 1.5 where it would create mergeinfo entries that it didn't use and were superfluous.

Peter Mortensen
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Paul Wagland
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